The boys had carried on this conversation in snatches. This seemed to irritate their captor.
“Do you intend to submit to being bound or shall I have to order my men to club you down,” he demanded.
The cold brutality of his tone struck into both the boys like a lash across the face.
“We will be bound, if you think that is necessary,” replied Frank contemptuously.
“Yes, I do,” replied the officer, “you see you are very slippery customers and we don’t want you to fly away, señors flies;” and he laughed at his abominable joke in a way that made both boys long to hammer him into insensibility.
Two men—not the two the boys had knocked down, these could not be persuaded to go near them regarding them as “diabolos,”—quickly bound their wrists with green hide thongs and then, at a sharp command from the officer, the men marched off through the jungle. Frank and Harry well guarded by a dozen men with fixed bayonets marched in the middle. No wonder their spirits fell to zero.
There was not a chance of escape.
Rapidly the boys’ brains reviewed the situation. Resourceful as they were they could see no way out of their dilemma. They were fairly trapped. Again and again they bitterly blamed their recklessness in taking any part in the revolutionist’s cause, for the fact that they had been caught red handed in the very act of transferring ammunition from the ship to the shore, would be exactly the circumstance Rogero would seize upon to order their execution. They both realized that. Had it not been for that they could have demanded to see their consul and probably Rogero would not have dared to refuse their request—as it was, however, they were to all intents and purposes revolutionists and their fate at Rogero’s hands they could anticipate all too clearly.
At dawn they were on the march once more, after a brief encampment at about midnight. From this hurry they gathered that the force that had attacked Ruiz was not the main branch of the army but a marauding force sent out by Rogero. They did not question that they were on their way to the latter’s headquarters. What would become of them there they had already guessed. They had little time to act if they were to formulate a plan of escape,—but it seemed maddeningly impossible to frame any scheme, that would hold water when it was conned over.
All day they marched through the steaming jungle. Sometimes they forded chocolate-colored sluggish streams and waded through vile morasses,—where huge alligators slipped from rotting logs into the slimy waters,—or blue herons stood in solemn rows, like an army of ghostly soldiers,—seen among the trees. Then again they issued onto savannahs, on which the sun beat down with a heat that seemed to penetrate the skull. All about them the boys could not help noticing the ravages of the earthquake. Once at an early stage of the march they had asked one of their guards what had uprooted so many trees and caused such widespread damage: